One man’s wilderness (38 page)

Today I would see about the postholes for my cache stilts. The ground was not nearly as frozen as I had thought, but many rocks made for hard digging. I packed water and dumped it into the holes. This helped some. I decided to let the water set in the frost to hasten the thawing.

I cut my heavy stilt poles to length. The cache will sit at least nine feet off ground level, which should put it better than five feet above the winter snows. I plan to angle the stilts in a bit and run the upper ends at least two feet up into the corners of the inside of the cache. This should make the cache itself solid on the stilts without side bracing.

To set the stilts at an angle and extend the upper ends into the cache corners, I would have to make a bend about two and a half feet from the upper end of each post. After a few unsuccessful experiments, I gave up and sawed off the post ends, and just hewed a flat place on which to anchor the little house to its platform.

Like the cabin and the fireplace, I can see the cache up on the poles.

May 8th
. Snow showers. Thirty degrees.

A kettle of lima beans bubbled on the stove while I deepened my postholes.

Babe came sliding in on the skis. Something very special this time, a
fancy chocolate cake. Sister Florence had sent Babe’s wife money to bake me a birthday cake.

I popped a pan of popcorn in some bacon grease, and soon we were munching away. No, he hadn’t seen arctic hares around Lake Clark. He might bring the mission girls out to see my cabin one of these days, maybe while the ice was still good. After a slice of my birthday cake, he took off in a swirl of snow and disappeared over the volcanic mountains.

I read my mail and went back to my posthole project. The holes are now thirty-two inches deep.

I must sprinkle a fresh coat of gravel on my floor and the path out front. That threat of the mission girls arriving causes me no end of extra laundry, not to mention dusting and keeping things in reasonable order.

I can hear the sound of the small waterfall over on Falls Mountain this evening.

May 9th
. The sun lighted the cabin logs at four-thirty this morning. Soon the sun will clear the mountains completely and there will be sunshine in the valley all day.

I watched a chickadee going in and out of a knothole in the big spruce near the clothesline. Instead of packing material in, she was packing it out, rotten wood from inside the tree. Should be a nest there soon. Today the frozen snow sparkles with the blaze of billions of diamonds. A very wide wedge of snow-white swans flew against the dark blue sky. Caribou bulls on the upper end of the lake. Many sheep on the mountains. Lambing time draws near.

May 10th
. Twenty-six degrees. Hope Creek broke through the ice today and flowed on top down along the far side.

A pair of hoary redpolls. The little male looks as if he had a can of red paint spilled on his head and down his vest. Many small birds are here now. An eagle, circling low along the slope, let out a war cry. Does he do this to flush his prey out of hiding?

May 11th
. Saw a sight today. As Babe would say, “Now wasn’t that something?”

It was a beautiful spring morning. I decided to climb up through Low Pass and take a look at the Kigik River country. The snow crust kept breaking through but I finally made it over the pass to my favorite rocky knoll overlooking the big basin of the Kigik River. The sun was warm as I glassed the surroundings.

I picked up the trail of a lone caribou in the lenses and had just caught up with the cow when I saw her turning suspiciously. Something else caught my eye—a calf and a very small one. The cow was working toward me, and on her heels the wobbly legged calf. I hoped they would keep coming but the calf lay down. The cow browsed about and finally settled down beside it.

She had picked a good place to have her calf. There was very little chance of a wolf finding her here. Soon she was on her feet again. But at that moment I spotted a bear in the snow basin. His course would take him right to them.

The cow saw him and knew it was danger. She headed my way, stopping and nudging the calf to follow. The little one hurried as best it could, which was none too fast. The cow trotted and waited, trotted and waited.

Then the bear saw them and broke into a lumbering run. On they came, the calf doing its best with its legs going in all directions. I knew it wouldn’t make it. They would pass me at 100 yards along the top edge of a high bench with an open rock slide face.

The bear was coming on fast. He would catch the calf near my stand. The end of the bench pitched steeply into deep snow and the cow ploughed into it. But it was too much for the calf. It bogged down in the snow, calling,
How! How!

The cow stood in the snow at the foot of the bench, looking up. Still bawling, the calf struggled to the rocks. On came the bear along the top edge. If I had had the ought-six along, I would have changed his mind in a hurry.

Then a strange thing happened. The bear seemed unaware of the calf in front of him. His mind was on the cow and he took a shortcut across the slide, rattling rocks down in his haste to get to her. He passed less than forty feet below the calf. When he hit the snow on the dead run, he ploughed along on his muzzle and nearly upended. The cow leaped in panic down the canyon
toward the upper lake, the bear helter-skelter on her heels. I was shaking with the excitement of the scene.

The little calf struggled across the steep, snow-covered slope. It lost its balance and collapsed in a heap. As I approached, it lay very still, head outstretched on the snow. I don’t think it was a day old.

As much as I wanted to comfort the calf, I decided not to bother it. I would wait for the cow to return. Would she come back? Had the bear caught up to her?

Two hours passed and still the calf lay there in the snow. I would move it to a patch of dry grass, scent or no. I picked it up. The little doe was limp as a rag. I laid her on the dry mat of grass and she lay there very still. Suddenly she got to her feet and tottered toward the rock slide. This would never do. She started climbing faster and I cut her off. Then she turned and began to grunt and came right toward me. She thought I was her mom. I caught her and tied her four legs together with my bandanna. I left her resting easy in a sheltered warm place and followed the bear tracks to the head of the canyon. Those big claws were really digging in and I could see the long leaps the cow had taken in the snow. I waited and watched, but saw nothing.

Finally I went back to the little orphan. I could see the red bandanna before I saw her. They really blend in with their natural surroundings, I thought.

She was gone! The bandanna was still knotted. I picked up her trail and found her bedded down about 100 yards down the slope.

It was getting late and it was now snowing. I hated to leave her. What if the cow did not come back? Had the bear dragged her down? I decided to pack the little girl to my cabin, and return with her in the morning. If the cow did come back in the night, she would probably stay in the area for a spell.

What a tussle! She struggled and blatted,
How! How!
as I tied her legs together and pushed her rear end down into the front pocket of my ammunition bag. She was so small that only her neck and head stuck out, and I felt like a mother kangaroo with a young one peering out of the pouch. For a time she churned and twisted to get out, calling out,
How! How!
over and over again. I kept bucking the deep snow with the little noise-maker-squirming below my
chest. Finally her struggles lessened and her
hows
became grunts. She began to work her mouth. The little tyke was getting hungry, and she rubbed her nose against my face.

The lake at last. Her eyes were closed and her head resting against my arm as we covered the last two miles to the cabin.

I turned her loose inside. She was pretty wobbly at first but soon she got around, nosing here and there. She fell over the potato box and finally lay down in front of the fireplace.

What to feed her? I had some non-fat powdered milk. I boiled and strained oatmeal, added a little sugar and some honey and a drop or two of vinegar. She was up rubbing against me before it was done. I took a clean white rag, saturated it with the mixture and put it to her mouth. She sucked my finger. I decided she was going to make it.

She curled up in the middle of the gravel floor and seemed happy as a new baby caribou could be under the circumstances. What should I name her? I thought I would call her Mae, as it was the month of May when she became my orphan.

Perhaps I should have walked away and left her on the mountain. If I had, I don’t think I would have slept at all.

May 12th
. Well, I didn’t sleep anyway.

A baby caribou has a loud and penetrating voice. Its vocabulary consists of three words: . . .
how! ow!
and
uh!
She used them all through the night and, in addition, rattled everything that was loose in the cabin. I fed her at ten, at twelve, and at three. She even tried to climb into my bunk but finally settled for just curling up beside it.